Patrick bateman does david byrne

Miles Fisher - This Must Be The Place (Cover) from Miles Fisher on Vimeo.

Do you like Miles Fisher? His latest EP marks a new peak of professionalism. This is his take on David Byrne’s ‘This Must Be the Place’.

In case you missed it in 2009, Popmatters has recently rediscovered Fisher’s version of the Talking Heads hit (below), which in a brilliant tribute to American Psycho, examines how ‘even monsters love pop music’. 

According to a little research, Fisher is a former Texan with a penchant for a capella (he took his Harvard troupe, the Krokodiloes on a tour of 24 countries). He does a mad Tom Cruise impression and played Kinsey’s preppy Princeton drug-pushing buddy Jeffrey Graves in Mad Men, below. (You may recall uptight Peggy’s defiant introduction: ‘I’m Peggy Olson, and I want to smoke some marijuana’).

The fact that he bears an uncanny resemblance to both Tom Cruise and Christian Bale, combined with his mum sitting on the board of the National Film Institute, makes me think he’s pretty much cut out for a life on screen. However, his Ivy League education and the almost excruciating level of detail he’s gone to make the Byrne cover work shows there must be something more to him than just looking like an early-80s Cruise/Bale hybrid.

But then… maybe he’s just riding on the fact that two formerly respected actors are now almost universally known for being either difficult or virtually insane. Plus he’s probably demanding a much, much lower rate for the charming yet slightly sleazy prepster roles.

Hell, it’s a great, great song. And a personal favourite.  I say more power to him. You can check him out at Milesfisher.com, read a mega interview with American Psycho author Bret Easton Ellis over at Vice (just don’t blame me if the photos of his smug face make you want to retch/never read a BEE novel again) or enjoy the original David Byrne track below:

Remember when kim gordon was cool?

I do. She’s in Sonic Youth. She’s married to Thurston Moore. She started the X-Girl fashion label, for God’s sake. And she co-directed the Breeders’ Cannonball video, below, with Spike Jonze.

Now she’s focussing on her art again, with a new exhibition at New York’s John McWhinnie at Glenn Horowitz Bookseller & Art Gallery. The recent opening brought in all kinds of New York cool – think Chloë Sevigny, Terry Richardson, that girl from Gang Gang Dance, and somehow, even James Frey* got an invite.

Gordon’s Noise Paintings feature the names of noise and no-wave bands, with the gallery exalting:

Loosely painted words have dripping edges and bleeding contours that threaten to disrupt or annihilate the sense within. There is the feel of un-stylised urban graffiti, of the anonymous, spontaneous scrawls encountered in the profane world.

Is this the best she could do? Lord knows the gallery did their best to find some meaning in the whole thing, but two often incongruous words in dripping paint? It seems she’s been working on the series for a while, with similar themes evident in a Paris exhibition curated by Rodarte in Oct 09:

I do like Pussy Galore. Still…the actual quality is somewhat lacking - every letter seems forced, the drips contrived. But what do I know? I guess I just expect more from ONE OF THE FOUNDING MEMBERS OF SONIC YOUTH.

See Gordon’s earlier work with Spike Jonze:

*James Frey. You know, the guy who wrote a memoir, that wasn’t really a memoir, so people got upset and the publishers offered a refund, but only if they had their original receipt + page 163 of the book + a sworn statement that they felt deceived + a pledge of allegiance to the Church of Oprah, who confronted him on the whole flimflam.

And now that his book’s touted as a ‘semi-fictional memoir’, Frey’s getting invited to Kim Gordon exhibition openings and laughing all the way to the bank.

Read more on Chloë Sevigny on through being cool.